Loading AI tools
American poet and professor (born 1976) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Jericho Brown (born April 14, 1976) is an American poet and writer. Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Brown has worked as an educator at institutions such as the University of Houston, the University of San Diego, and Emory University. His poems have been published in The Nation, New England Review, The New Republic, Oxford American, and The New Yorker, among others. He released his first book of prose and poetry, Please, in 2008. His second book, The New Testament, was released in 2014. His 2019 collection of poems, The Tradition, garnered widespread critical acclaim.
Jericho Brown | |
|---|---|
Jericho Brown reading at the 2023 National Book Festival | |
| Born | Nelson Demery III April 14, 1976 Shreveport, Louisiana, U.S. |
| Occupation | |
| Language | English |
| Education | Dillard University (BA) University of New Orleans (MFA) University of Houston (PhD) |
| Notable works | The Tradition (2019) |
| Website | |
| jerichobrown | |
Brown has won several accolades throughout his career, including a Whiting Award, an American Book Award, an Anisfield-Wolf Book Award, and the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.[1][2]
Born Nelson Demery III and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Brown later changed his name and graduated from Dillard University, where he was initiated as a member of Alpha Phi Alpha fraternity, through the Beta Phi chapter, in the fall of 1995. He also graduated from the University of New Orleans with an MFA, and from the University of Houston with a Ph.D.[3]
Brown was a teaching fellow in the English department at the University of Houston from 2002 to 2007, a visiting professor at San Diego State University's MFA program in spring 2009, and an assistant professor of English at the University of San Diego. He has also taught at numerous conferences and workshops, including the Iowa Summer Writing Festival at the University of Iowa. He is an associate professor of English and director of the Creative Writing Program at Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia.[4] Previously, he worked as a speechwriter for the mayor of New Orleans.[5]
In 2011, Brown received the 2011 National Endowment for the Arts Fellowship for Poetry.[1] His poems have appeared in The Iowa Review, jubilat, The Nation, New England Review, The New Republic, Oxford American, The New Yorker, Enkare Review, and The Best American Poetry. He serves as an Assistant Editor at Callaloo.[6]
His first book, Please (New Issues Poetry & Prose, 2008), won the American Book Award.[7] His second book, a book of poetry titled The New Testament (Copper Canyon Press, 2014), won the 2015 Anisfield-Wolf Book Award.
Brown's third book, a collection of poems titled The Tradition (Copper Canyon Press, 2019), garnered widespread critical acclaim and won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.[2]
Brown published his fourth book in 2023, How We Do it: Black Writers on Craft, Practice and Skill, an anthology of 31 essays and interviews from African American authors.[8]
The colloquialism of the title, which means "and them" — as in "Tell your mama 'n'em I said hello" — encompasses a host of people made familiar by the world of the poem. Most of us have known them: elders and distant ancestors whose way of being was rooted in the wisdom of folk knowledge, a generation now all but gone. Poem selected by Natasha Trethewey.
For T's ongoing series, the Swiss performance artist, painter and sculptor John Armleder created a response to a poem by Jericho Brown, 2015 winner of the Ainsfield-Wolf Book Award for Poetry.
In this charming yet sobering lyric, Jericho Brown confronts his own image as a black man — what those on the outside imagine they see, and what he can't help carrying inside, locked from view. Driven by the lilt of the blues (ghosted in the buried rhymes of books/looks, concern/earn, blue/new, cracked/black), the layers multiply and intersect with sad, irrefutable logic. A relentless dismantling of identity, a difficult jewel of a poem: painfully candid one minute, in your face the next — and as we approach Martin Luther King Jr. Day, still distressingly apropos. Selected by Rita Dove
The Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Jericho Brown writes for the Book Review about life during the pandemic.
By Jericho Brown, winner of the 2020 Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, on the occasion of the inauguration of Joe Biden and Kamala Harris.
{{cite magazine}}: CS1 maint: others (link)Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.
Every time you click a link to Wikipedia, Wiktionary or Wikiquote in your browser's search results, it will show the modern Wikiwand interface.
Wikiwand extension is a five stars, simple, with minimum permission required to keep your browsing private, safe and transparent.
